WAR AND PEACE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26485, 12 June 1947, Page 4

WAR AND PEACE

ARMS MANUFACTURE MATTER FOR GOVERNMENTS PRIME MINISTER EMPHATIC P.A. WELLINGTON, June 11. “The manufacture of arms should not be allowed to remain in the hands of private manufacturers any longer.” declared the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, at the Labour Party’s conference to-night. Already there was active competition for orders by rival manufacturers of death-dealing wares in certain countries. “ We cannot have world peace along that road,” Mr Fraser said. “ The defence of the country is Government business and should remain the business of Governments and Governments alone.” Unless and until the United Nations were given powers to control war and warlike preparations they could not hope for permanent peace. Talk' of rivalries and division between East and West was the most reprehensible that could be indulged in at any time. It could not but breed ill-feeling ' and distrust, and should be dropped. “As a democratic country, we must maintain our faith in the sanctity of the human right of all people in all countries to live out their lives in peace and harmony,” he said. The division of human effort into the making of arms and armaments should cease and I hope the day will yet come when, through the agency of the United Nations, the whole world will disarm.”

Mr Fraser was speaking on the report of the Defence Committee in support of a recommendation that the United Nations should control atomic power, to which was added bacteriological warfare.